The tips of her fingers brushed the canister of pepper spray. She stretched the fingers, wiggled them. She couldn't get a grip on it. He tugged on her fly and brought it down. His other hand applied greater pressure to her throat.
Diana knew time was short. She made a quick, jerking motion to the left. The pepper spray fell out and brushed against her hand. She missed it. Her hand scrambled in the dirt.
The man worked the zipper open and pulled on her pants. He worked them down a little, but as he moved to do that, he granted her a greater range of motion. She reached and touched the pepper spray. She wrapped two fingers around it and moved it. She tucked it into her palm and raised it in the air.
She didn't have time to aim. She might be firing it into her own face. She didn't care.
She depressed the button with her thumb and fired a stream of the liquid. It hit the man flush in the eyes.
He screamed and rolled off of her. He rolled into the Foley girl's grave and landed on top of her.
Diana rolled in the other direction. She started to run out of the clearing, but saw two figures approaching her. One of them had a gun. She stopped and scrambled back, searching on the ground for her own weapon.
"Diana! Diana!"
She recognized the voice.
Dan?
"Diana, are you okay?"
He held his gun on the man on the ground, who was still in the grave with his hands over his eyes, howling in pain.
"Diana?"
"I'm okay," she said. "I'm okay."
"What's going on here?" Dan said.
Diana took a deep breath. She didn't recognize the man with Dan. She didn't really care. At the moment, she hoped it was all over.
"This is a crime scene, Dan. That's the Foley girl's body right there."
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Diana waited in the back of a cruiser in the driveway of the Donahue house while the crime scene was processed. Given the size of the scene and its remote location, it took most of the night. But she stayed awake in the back of the car. She wanted to know what was happening and didn't trust herself to sleep there, so close to the clearing.
Near daybreak, Dan came out to check on her. He slipped into the back of the cruiser, a paper cup of coffee in his hand.
"Well?" Diana said.
He shook his head. "We haven't found what you're looking for," he said. "It's the Foley girl. And Jason. And a body that might be Margaret Todd. The coroner says it looks like she's been dead about a month, but she could be about the right age. There's no obvious sign of trauma."
"Shit."
"Her mom's sending the dental records. She still has them after all these years."
"That doesn't surprise me."
"They should have the ID done in a few hours."
"I'd like to be the one to tell Mrs. Todd."
"Sure. You can come along. But there's no guarantee—"
"Dan, it's her. I know it's her."
Dan didn't contradict her, and she took his silence as a form of agreement. "We're still looking and will be for a while, so there's still a chance. We've found remains that go back a long way, maybe a hundred years. Doctor Ludwig says this doesn't surprise him at all. He's been researching the area for a long time."
"He's already asked to interview me for his book," Diana said. "Are you going to deputize him?"
Dan smiled, but it was forced. She understood that the weight of the night's revelations—especially if Margie Todd's body really did rest in that grave—would come down on him like the sun and the moon and stars. She only wished she could help him more.
"What do you think this place is?" Dan said. "What does it do to people?"
"It draws them here," Diana said. "It gets them to do things they might not ordinarily do."
"It turned this Donahue guy into a killer. He seems harmless enough away from there, but something changed him in that clearing."
"It changed me, too," Diana said.
"How?"
"Remember how you said I spend too much time on the sidelines? That it was easy for me to sit back and judge others without really putting myself out there? Remember?"
Dan smiled a little. "Do you remember any of the good things I said to you?"
"That was a good thing," Diana said. "You were right. I wasn't involved...with anything. In some way, this place got me to do that. I don't know if that was its intent, but it worked."
"You know, we're going to be looking out here for a long time," he said. "We might find something about Rachel."
"I doubt it. But it doesn't really matter."
"Why's that?"
"I don't know. Maybe I wasn't brought out here to find Rachel. Maybe I'm not meant to do that. Maybe I was just meant to stop this. Tonight. Maybe that's enough."
Dan looked thoughtful. "Do you believe that?"
Diana looked out the window of the cruiser where the horizon was just lightening.
"I'm working on it, Dan. I'm working on it."
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
At noon that day, Diana drove to Kay Todd's trailer with Dan. They hadn't called in advance, but when they pulled to the front of the small, pathetic looking trailer, Kay was standing at the door, a cigarette in her hand. When she saw them, she started shaking her head.